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by Samuel Beckett, directed by Daniel Brooks

Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto

October 31-November 17, 2012

Nell: “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.”

In 1999 Daniels Brooks directed a superb production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame for Soulpepper starring Peter Donat as Hamm, Diego Matamoros as Clov, Jim Warren as Nagg and Karen Robinson as Nell.  Now Soulpepper has given Brooks the chance to take a second look at this masterpiece, but the results are much less impressive.  First, Brooks tries to humanize the drama and to make the action less stylized which noticeably conflicts with Beckett’s stylized setting.  Second, although the new Nagg and Nell are superior to those in 1999 and Diego Matamoros returns as Clov, Joseph Ziegler is woefully miscast in the central role of Hamm.  

Beckett originally wrote Endgame in French in 1957 as Fin de partie and translated it the following year into English.  In many ways the play presents a more detailed look at the master-slave relationship of Pozzo and Lucky, who appear in Beckett’s earlier play, Waiting for Godot.  Hamm (Ziegler), the Pozzo figure, sits centre-stage in a jerrybuilt wheelchair and is waited on by the Lucky-figure Clov (Matamoros), who repeated wonders why he obeys Hamm’s every command.  Also situated in the grey room are two trash cans containing Hamm’s parents Nagg (Eric Peterson) and Nell (Maria Vacratsis). 

What we gather from the dialogue is that space these four inhabit is a bunker halfway underground.  Some apocalypse has happened killing all life outside and altering the weather so that light outside is always grey.  Clov describes the outside world as “Zero”.  Hamm says, “Outside of here is death.”  As far as they know, the four characters on stage are the last remaining representatives of humanity on earth.  Beckett’s satire focusses on vanity of Hamm’s attempts to maintain a hierarchy of power and decorum in the face of nothingness that surrounds him.    

Beckett’s description of the set states, “Left and right back, high up, two small windows.”  Normally, these windows are placed at the extreme left and right of the same back wall.  One reason for this is to make the stage image look like we are inside a stylized skull, with the action of the four characters representing the dying activity of the mind inside that skull.  The parallel is reinforced when the curtain rises to reveal the set and Hamm lifts a stained handkerchief to reveal his face.  Unfortunately, set designer Julie Fox, who designed the set in 1999, has placed the windows on left and right walls of the set, thus destroying this aspect of Beckett’s imagery.  It also undermines the humour of the two windows – one with a view of the earth, one with a view of the sea.  In Fox’s new set, Clov could quite logically have a different view from windows facing in opposite directions.  The humour in Beckett’s original plan is that Clov should see such different vistas while looking in the same direction.

Brooks’ attempt to humanize the characters, especially Hamm and Clov, ruins Beckett’s satire on human vanity.  Basically, Brooks tries to turn Hamm and Clov into Vladimir and Estragon from Waiting for Godot rather than Pozzo and Lucky.  Hamm and Clov are not two equal men playing games to pass the time while they are waiting, but master and servant where the servant is constantly tempted to rebellion by the master’s demands.  What Brooks does not ask for, or cannot draw from Ziegler, is the image of Hamm as ham actor (as per his name) or as tyrant.  Beckett’s vision of the delusions of humanity are summed up in Hamm, who rules his (tiny) territory, commands his (few) subjects, loves the sound of his own voice and relishes his superiority over others.  The comedy and tragedy of the situation is that the void outside his minuscule territory and his total dependence on a servant inside his territory render ludicrous his pretensions to power, superiority and grandiloquence. 

Ziegler does not have the orotund voice, even when he shouts, that Donat had to project Hamm’s imperious image of himself.  Without that he cannot, as Donat did, also show the fearful doubts that creep into Hamm’s consciousness of the truth of his complete meaninglessness and helplessness.  When Ziegler delivers Hamm’s continuing story of how he took in the child of one of his tenants, he doesn’t distinguish clearly between Hamm’s voice as storyteller versus his voice commenting on his story versus his self-interruptions to chide Nagg and Clov.  Beckett compares Hamm to Oedipus, Richard III and King Lear for a reason.  They are all men besotted with power who end up as the lowest of the low.  Since Hamm is immobile, Ziegler simply doesn't have the command of voice to bring off the role.  At the same time, Brooks new view of Hamm sees him as a man racked by anxiety which destroys the wonderful conflict Beckett has set up in him between the inner man and his façade.

As for Clov, Brooks has made him more of a capable human being and less of the traumatized character he was in 1999.  Given that the world outside has been destroyed and there is nowhere to escape to, Clov’s only refuge in inside with a man who treats him with condescension even though Clov may, or may not, be his own son.  Before we saw a suffering being who dreamed of freedom (whatever that might mean in the midst of a void) but who found comfort despite his dreams in his routine with Hamm.  That fully explains while Clov obeys Hamm despite Hamm’s tyranny.  In Brooks’ new view Clov is not a traumatized member of the walking wounded, but a man who talks back to Hamm’s face, rather than muttering under his breath.  Here, too, Brooks, loses the contrast between the façade of servility and the rancour underneath.  Nevertheless, Matamoros plays this new version well even if it makes less sense of Clov’s obedience.

The real highlight of the show are Maria Vacratsis and Eric Peterson as Nagg and Nell.  It’s quite prescient of Beckett to see in 1957 that we as a society are only too glad to discard the aged, here literally “bottled” in trash cans.  Peterson has been made up to look like he’s about 250 years old.  Vacratsis also looks terrible, though youthful compared to Peterson, and costume designer Victoria Wallace has given her a ribbon Nell wears in her ashen hair as if she’s mentally never left her girlhood behind.  The two make the still romantic feelings Nagg and Nell have for each other both hilarious and pathetic at the same time.  Their heroic attempt to kiss, despite being in separate cans, shows a desire sadly unfulfilled by ability.  The number of meanings Vacratsis draws from a single word like “Yesterday” far outstrips anything Ziegler does with similar significant words.  Peterson’s Nagg is humorously feisty, considering his decrepit condition, and even he is still egotistical enough to think that it was his joke that made Nell laugh all those years ago and not the happiness she was feeling. 

Given that the light is meant to be unchanging, outside and in, there ought to be little for lighting designer Kevin Lamotte to do.  Unfortunately, Brooks has had him light the set as if this were a naturalistic play and include a slow fade-out at the end as if night were falling.  Sorry, as in so many of Beckett’s plays, there is either bright light or darkness, as in Godot, or a constant dim light as here.  The symbolic problem is that there is no night.  The metatheatrical problem is that Beckett views the play as a performance (see all the references to the audiences, exits and asides) where lights on means action and lights off means no action.  For those reasons, changes in light intensity go counter to Beckett’s concept.

If you saw Brooks’ great Endgame in 1999, there is no reason to see this one.  What you learn from this production, except for Peterson and Vacratsis, is mostly a series of opportunities missed.  If you have never seen Endgame before, you will find it an adequate introduction to the play but should recognize that there is much more to the play that Brooks and Ziegler get out of it.  The production proves that second thoughts can be less insightful than the first.            

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Maria Vacratsis and Eric Peterson. ©2012 Cylla von Tiedemann.

For tickets, visit www.soulpepper.ca.